American Front Founder David Lynch Shot to Death

March 02, 2011

Heidi Beirich

Early this morning, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting in Citrus Heights, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. Law enforcement authorities said the man, who was shot in the head and torso, was found dead inside the home. The woman, who was shot in the leg, was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Local media reports said that two children were believed by law enforcement to have been inside the home at the time of the shooting.

Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Hatewatch that the man who was shot was David Lynch, 40, and his death is being treated as a homicide.

Lynch was a clever and charismatic racist skinhead organizer whose history of racist activism dates back to the late 1980s, when he became the eastern states coordinator for American Front, a nationwide skinhead coalition modeled after Britain's racist National Front. After American Front's power waned in the mid-1990s, Lynch lived for a time in Canada, then relocated to Sacramento, where he gradually assumed control of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country.

While he maintained a strong presence in the Sacramento white supremacist subculture from the late 1990s through 2005, at one point meeting with then-National Alliance chairman William Pierce when the neo-Nazi leader visited Sacramento, Lynch for the most part limited his activities to that city alone.

Later, Lynch’s empire expanded. In 2007, law enforcement officials told the SPLC that Lynch had united skinhead crews in northern and southern California, Utah and Florida under the banner of a newly energized American Front. He had also established a United States division of Troops of Tomorrow, an international skinhead organization, and helped to launch Prison Skin, a prison outreach campaign to support and glorify incarcerated skinheads.

Skinheads and neo-Nazis from around the country are posting memorials to Lynch on Facebook. Expressing what seems to be the common sentiment, Billy Roper of White Revolution wrote: “Dave Lynch: My Friend, and one of the best men I’ve ever known, a hero of our people and our cause. We are in shock.”